For quite a few years now, reading aloud with other people has been a pleasurable — as well as educational — part of my life. Every week, I join several other folks over Zoom, to take turns reading some classic literary work to each other. [If you would like to join us, look for the “Shakespeare Night” sessions in the Meetup group called “Hack Manhattan”. Note that, despite our group’s title, we read many things in addition to Shakespeare.]
Another manifestation of this, is the tradition my wife and I have of reading aloud on long car trips. Sometimes we just choose a book for its general interest (e.g. Huckleberry Finn). But last year, when we planned a driving trip through parts of Atlantic Canada, my reading choice was more “targeted”.
Reading througn my guidebook in advance, I noticed a text box entitled “Acadian Deportation”. Until recent years, I was never much interested in history, so I had not been aware of this terrible part of Canada’s past. The Acadians were descendants of French settlers. In what has been described as an ethnic cleansing, many of them were forcibly deported from Canada, by the British, during the mid-18th century, About 11,500 Acadians were expelled; of these, around one-third died from disease and drowning. (In perhaps the only ray of light in this situation, Spain — which controlled Louisiana at the time — invited some of the Acadians to settle there, where they became known as Cajuns.)
My travel guide also mentioned that the US poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote an epic poem about the Acadian expulsion called Evangeline (1847). This rang a vague bell in my head, but I have to admit that my main association with Longfellow, until then, was a bearded gentleman in the “Authors” card game that I played when I was a kid. (And oh yes, didn’t he write that Hiawatha, with its strange drumbeat rhythms? So familiar in one way, yet probably never read by me.)
Nevertheless, I decided to put Evangeline into my iPhone, so that on our (often long) drives in Canada, my spouse and I could read through this work aloud. (In practice, since — long guilty story short — my wife turned out to be “the” driver, I was the one to actually do the reading.)
It turned out that Evangeline is really a long poem, and we didn’t actually finish the reading process till returning, some weeks later, from a visit to our daughter and granddaughter in Connecticut. Evangeline turned out not to be not the easiest thing in the world for me to take in. There is undeniablty a sentimentality, and a religiosity, that strike me as old-fashioned.
But there were several substantial pluses for me. I learned that the form of Evangeline is a real tour de force. It is the most familiar — and perhaps the most successful — example of “dactylic hexameter” in English. Longfellow used as his model the line structure of Greek and Roman classical poetry … which certainly does not come naturally to the English language! He writes using six three-syllable “feet” per line, first syllable accented (would have been “long” in classical times), with a two-part foot sometimes taking the place of a three-part foot. Here is an example from the beginning of the poem … an accent mark has been placed after the first syllable of each foot:
THIS’ is the for’est prime’val. The mur’muring pi’nes and the hem’locks,
Bear’ded with moss’, and in’ garments green’, indistinct’ in the twi’light,
Stand’ like Dru’ids of eld’, with voi’ces sad’ and prophet’ic,
Stand’ like harp’ers hoar’, with beards’ that rest’ on their bos’oms.
Loud’ from its rock’y caverns, the deep’-voiced neigh’boring o’cean
Speaks’, and in acc’ents discon’solate an’swers the wail’ of the for’est.
The Acadian tragedy is told through the particular example of a (fictional) couple, Evangeline and Gabriel, who are separated by the expulsion, and who search for each other through the course of the poem. (I will not “spoil” the story by revealing the ending!)
Evangeline, through its popularity, has over the years raised public consciousness of the plight of the Acadians. It did the same for my wife and myself; not just through the poem alone, but by means of the extra reading and discussion that it encouraged. I still cannot quite accept Evangeline in the totally comfortable way that I’m able to do with much other classic literature. But I think that I’ve expanded my literary horizons by immersing myself in it.
Although we didn’t make it there on our trip, here is a photo of the Grand-Pré National Historic Site, in Nova Scotia. Grand-Pré was the site of the first Acadian expulsions, and, in the poem, the village where Evangeline and Gabriel lived. Below we see the memorial church, and a statue of Evangeline:
Later this year, my wife and I are planning an RV drive from Seattle, Washington to Anchorage, Alaska. Granted, we’re only driving one way, but even without side trips to Banff etc, we are talking about 2,260 miles here. I’m already thinking about what appropriate reading aloud we could do. Certainly, Robert Service and Jack London come to mind. Any other ideas?
lessthanamegabyte 